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Hare Krishna Prabhujis and Matajis,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudeva.

 

In Srimad Bhagavatam verse 10.2.26, the demigods pray to Lord Krishna in the womb of Mother Devaki as follows.

 

 

The demigods prayed: "O Lord, You never deviate from Your vow, which is always perfect because whatever You decide is perfectly correct and cannot be stopped by anyone. Being present in the three phases of cosmic manifestation-creation, maintenance and annihilation—You are the Supreme Truth. Indeed, unless one is completely truthful, one cannot achieve Your favor, which therefore cannot be achieved by hypocrites. You are the active principle, the real truth, in all the ingredients of creation, and therefore you are known as antaryaami, the inner force. You are equal to everyone, and Your instructions apply for everyone, for all time. You are the beginning of all truth. Therefore, offering our obeisances, we surrender unto You. Kindly give us protection."

 

Lord is Absolute truth (satya param) and He never deviates from His vow (satya-vrata). Since He is omniscient and omni-present, He also knows whether we are speaking truth or not. We can never be successful in cheating the Lord. By trying to be dishonest, we only displease Him. But when we are completely truthful we become eligible for His benediction. Guru or spiritual master is also representative of Lord. So it is equally important that we be truthful to Guru also. Neither Guru, nor Supreme Lord reject people based on birth, family-lineage, wealth, status etc. But one of the important quality They look out for us is whether the disciple is truthful and honest. In this regard we can consider the example of two people - Satyakama and Karna.

 

In his wonderful lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam verse 1.16.4 in Los-Angeles on January 1 1974, Srila Prabhupada says, "A brahmana must be truthful. That is the first business of a brahmana—truthful. He'll speak truth even before an enemy. Nobody speaks truth before an enemy because he wants to hide something. But brahmana's business is to become truthful even before an enemy. That is stated. There are many instances. Just like Satyakama-Jabala, a boy, Satyakama, he went to Gautama Muni: "Sir, I want to become your disciple." "Oh, very good. Are you brahmana or brahmana's son?" Formerly, in Vedic ways, nobody could be accepted as a disciple unless he's born in high class family, brahmana, kshatriya, vaishya—especially brahmana. So this question was asked, "Which family you belong to?" So he said, "I do not know what is my classification." "Now, who is your father?" "That I do not know." "Ask your mother." Then he went to his mother, "Who is my father?" "My dear boy, I do not know." So actually his mother was maidservant. So maidservants have so many men, and by whom she was pregnant she cannot remember. She also told the truth. And this Satyakama, he also came to Gautama Muni, he said, "Sir, my father, my mother also do not know who is my father." "Oh, that's all right. You are a brahmana, because you are truthful. You do not hide yourself, that 'I am a prostitute's son.' You say this is the position. 'I am plainly speaking that my mother does not know who is my father. I do not know!' " So because he was truthful... That is the symptom of brahmana. He accepted, "Yes, I'll accept you as my disciple."

 

Since Satyakama did not hide the truth about his birth, the guru was pleased with him and accepted him as his disciple and blessed him with the knowledge of Absolute Truth. On the other hand we find that Karna inorder to learn about brahmastra approached Parashurama. He lied to him that he is a brahmana and requested him to accept him as a disciple. In due course of time, when the sage came to know that Karna had lied to him, he cursed Karna saying that, "When you face your greatest danger and desperately need your most powerful celestial weapon, you will not be able to remember the mantras."

 

So the lesson to be learnt from these incidents is that we must be always honest and truthful in our dealings with others, especially with spiritual master and Supreme Lord.

 

Thank you very much
Yours in service of Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudeva,
Sudarshana devi dasi.